Category: by publisher

Will a new literature format “radically alter” how scientists write, review, and read papers?

A group of authors at a Pittsburgh company have proposed a new way to write, review, and read scientific papers that they claim will “radically alter the creation and use of credible knowledge for the benefit of society.”

From the abstract of a paper appearing in the new Mary Liebert journal Disruptive Science and Technology, which, according to a press release, will “publish out-of-the-box concepts that will improve the way we live”: Continue reading Will a new literature format “radically alter” how scientists write, review, and read papers?

Would you pay $63 for a retraction notice?

For $63 plus tax, you can have a single steak with a side order of fried potatoes and a wedge of crisp iceberg lettuce at the famed Peter Luger steakhouse in Brooklyn. Or you can get a peek at one measly retraction notice from Bentham Science Publishers (at least it’s BYOB).

To be fair, the publisher, based in the United Arab Emirates, does offer a free version of the notice on its own website. But Bentham uses the company Ingenta Connect as a go-between to collect fees —  some of which reach $100 per article, according to a company employee — and as far as we can tell, no such gratis access is available through the middleman. Neither does Ingenta direct readers to the free version in its landing page for the notice.

The article in question, “Solubilization and Amorphization of Non Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug with Low Molecular Weight Chitosan for a New Guar-Based Colon Delivery Formulation,” by Kadria A. Elkhodairy, Nahla S. Barakat and Fars K. Alanazi, appeared in the March 2011 issue of Letters in Drug Design & Discovery. The retraction notice reads: Continue reading Would you pay $63 for a retraction notice?

Fleetwood Mac, anyone? Landslides paper crumbles under weight of “significant originality issue”

As Stevie Nicks sang in Fleetwood Mac’s hit, “Landslide”:

Well, I’ve been afraid of changing, cause I’ve built my life around you ….

The authors of a 2010 paper in the journal Landslides might have taken those words a little too much to heart. Their manuscript, “Real-time slope water table forecasting by multi-tank model combined with dual ensemble Kalman filter,” purported to be an original paper — but it was really “Second Hand News,” to quote more Fleetwood Mac, the kind that might have “Murrow Turning Over in His Grave.”

According to the notice: Continue reading Fleetwood Mac, anyone? Landslides paper crumbles under weight of “significant originality issue”

Puzzling: Maybe weight loss surgery paper by author who acknowledged fraud is being retracted after all

We’ve been following the case of Edward Shang, a weight loss surgeon who has acknowledged making up most — if not all — of the patients in a now-retracted study in Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. Last week, we reported that Obesity Surgery, where Shang had published four papers, would not be retracting any of them. That’s what Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases Obesity Surgery editor Scott Shikora told us in an email exchange (more on that below).

It turns out, however, that one of Shang’s Obesity Surgery papers had already been retracted, unbeknownst to us because the original abstract was not — and is still not — linked to the retraction notice, which reads: Continue reading Puzzling: Maybe weight loss surgery paper by author who acknowledged fraud is being retracted after all

He’s my editor, he’s my author, he’s my editor: A retraction reveals a tangled web

The June 2012 issue of Current Opinion in Critical Care has a retraction that might have been a rather mundane case of plagiarism but for the remarkably intertwined relationships of the authors of the publications involved.

Here’s the notice, which doesn’t attempt to broach the conflicts of interest (we can hardly blame them, as you’ll see): Continue reading He’s my editor, he’s my author, he’s my editor: A retraction reveals a tangled web

Obesity Surgery won’t retract papers by weight loss surgeon who published fake data elsewhere

Earlier this week, we reported on the case of Edward Shang, a weight loss surgeon who was forced to retract a study after it became clear that he had enrolled only about a third as many patients as he claimed — if he enrolled any at all. In that post, the editor in chief of Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, who retracted the paper, told us he had flagged the issue for Obesity Surgery editors, who had also published Shang’s work.

Yesterday, we heard back from the editor of Obesity Surgery, Scott Shikora, who tells us that he’s reviewed Shang’s four publications in his journal: Continue reading Obesity Surgery won’t retract papers by weight loss surgeon who published fake data elsewhere

Correcting The Anatomical Record: Article pulled after former student lifted lab findings

The Anatomical Record, the official organ of the American Association of Anatomists, weighs its acceptances on “the quality of the research, its originality and significance to our readership.”

So it’s not surprising that when it gets duped, it gets angry.

Consider the following retraction notice that appeared recently in the publication for an article it ran early 2010: Continue reading Correcting The Anatomical Record: Article pulled after former student lifted lab findings

Vacuum force researcher retracts paper that failed to name collaborators

Science doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Even vacuum science.

The International Journal of Modern Physics A has retracted a 2011 paper by a physicist who failed to acknowledge the contributions — instrumental, it seems — of his collaborators.

The paper, “Measurement of the Casimir Interaction Between a au Sphere and au Gratings” [au in this case being the atomic symbol for gold, not the French article], was published last summer by Ricardo Decca as part of a conference proceedings. According to the notice: Continue reading Vacuum force researcher retracts paper that failed to name collaborators

Author retracts weight loss surgery paper after admitting most, if not all, of the subjects were made up

If you had read “Aerobic endurance training improves weight loss, body composition, and co-morbidities in patients after laparoscopic Roux-en-Y gastric bypass,” a 2010 paper in Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, you might have been convinced by the title and findings that exercise was a good idea for people who’d had stomach stapling.

After all, the authors had operated on “60 consecutive morbidly obese patients” and then randomized them into “a low-exercise group (aerobic physical exercise 1 time for 1 hr/wk) or a multiple-exercise group (APE 2 times for 1 hr/wk)” so they could collect data on “age, gender, length of hospital stay, operative details, co-morbidities, postoperative complications, initial body weight and height, postoperative weight, and body composition.” When they did that, they found that “The multiple exercise group had a significantly more rapid reduction of body mass index, excess weight loss, and fat mass compared with the low-exercise group.”

Except that at best they had only operated on about a third the number of patients they said they had. Continue reading Author retracts weight loss surgery paper after admitting most, if not all, of the subjects were made up

Assay come, assay go: Corporate takeover leads to retraction of device analysis

A group of hematology researchers in Canada lost a publication to the merger of two medical device makers, after the acquiring company apparently decided not to pursue marketing the product in question.

An April 23 retraction notice in the International Journal of Laboratory Hematology about the article, “Enhanced flagging and improved clinical sensitivity on the new DxH 300TM Coulter® cellular analysis system,” originally published in February, tells the tale: Continue reading Assay come, assay go: Corporate takeover leads to retraction of device analysis